A personal watercraft is propelled by a water jet pump designed to draw water (including sea water) through a water intake opening formed in the bottom of the watercraft, and to pressurize and accelerate the water to eject rearwardly through an ejecting nozzle formed at the rear of the pump for propelling the watercraft forward.
A certain type of personal watercraft includes, a water intake duct which extends diagonally upward and rearward in the center of the rear portion of a hull that constitutes the lower portion of the watercraft body, a vertical wall connected to the rear end of the duct to form a pump mounting space on the rear of the vertical wall, and a pump bracket fitted to the inlet of the water jet pump connected to the vertical wall.
For connecting the pump bracket to the vertical wall formed in the hull, in this structure, a sealing element is inserted in a gap formed between the connecting surfaces of the pump bracket and the vertical wall.
There is another sealing structure proposed for holding cables which penetrate the hull such as an operating cable for water jet pump and the like, and for joint elements holding pipes which penetrate the hull such as a bilge pipe connected to a bilge pump or a cooling water pipe connected to the engine, which holders and joint elements are directly and separately secured to the hull by an adhesive to seal the penetrated portion of the hull (see Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. Hei 8-104287).
In the sealing structure connecting the pump bracket fitted to the inlet of the water jet pump to the vertical wall formed in the hull, it is sometimes difficult to insert the sealing element into the gap formed between connecting surfaces of the pump bracket and the vertical wall.
Moreover, the above structure of employing the sealing element between connecting surfaces of the hull and pump bracket, there remains a possibility of causing a small amount of leakage of water into the body of the watercraft or leakage of air into the pump, due to an insufficient sealing function of the sealing element between the connecting surfaces.
Separate sealing of holders and joint elements of the above prior structure increases complexity in design which requires a number of steps in the pump mounting operation.